The Power of Unbelief

Your faith will determine your experience of the supernatural. But Dr. Tony Evans says a lack of faith carries consequences of its own. Unbelief is so powerful, it'll stop God's work in your life. This is the alternative broadcast, featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr.

Tony Evans. We've all heard stories about the powerful things faith can accomplish, but today Dr. Evans explains why unbelief can be powerful too. In some pretty costly ways. Let's join him in Matthew chapter 17 as he begins.

All of us have traveled across bridges. When we travel across a bridge, it typically means That two bodies of land have been separated. by a challenge. There's either a waterway, a lake, or a river. that has to be crossed, that we can't drive across, so they construct a bridge.

Or perhaps There's one mountain range to another range, one large hill to another hill, separated by a valley, a low spot. That you can't drive across, or it's too big.

So they construct a bridge. This bridge is designed to take you from where you are to where you are trying to go. The bridge that God has constructed For you to move from the natural to the supernatural is the bridge called faith. It is the only bridge that he has constructed.

So, if you don't use that bridge, you don't cross over. What many of us need either in our lives or in the lives of folk we know demands the supernatural. And the reason you know it demands the supernatural is the natural hadn't fixed it. The natural hadn't changed it, reversed it, tweaked it. It hadn't done anything substantial with it.

And so it's time to cross over. But there's only one bridge. That's the faith bridge.

Now what you need to know is the power of unbelief. Because faith If it's the only bridge. And you don't have it. Unbelief will keep you stuck where you are. Unbelief is so powerful, it'll stop God's work in your life.

Unbelief is so powerful, it'll keep God at a distance. Unbelief is so powerful that you can spend the rest of your life. Stop! where you are. And never cross over to see the supernatural.

You'll see other folk on the other side of the bridge waving at you. Because you are too scared to cross over the bridge of faith. For where there was unbelief, it said, there were few miracles. We're going to start off with a story. Story here in chapter 17.

We have a father whose son has got mental problems. And he's got physical problems. She's physically impaired. The mental has influenced the physical. Not only that, but he's suicidal.

He throws himself into the fire. He throws himself into the water. This guy has lost it. We find out from the other passages, he goes into convulsions. This boy had something wrong with him and uh We have somebody in his life who cared.

His father. Natural for a father to care about a son. His father cared that he had a suicidal, very sick, epileptic.

Son who needed to be delivered. And everybody in here. Either has something from which they need to be delivered or know someone who has something from which they need Hey. That The natural can fix.

So what does daddy do? Verse 16. I brought him to your disciples. And they could not cure him. Why did daddy take his son to the disciples?

The first verse of chapter 10 of Matthew says, Jesus summoned his 12 disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness.

So we have a, watch this. Disappointed dad. Because he's got a major problem in his home with his son and the authorized folk who've been given authority. Can't fix it. It says when he brings the boy to Jesus Jesus speaks to the demon.

And the boy. is cured at once. Jesus went to the The source. Because the source of his pride The problem was spiritual. The mental problems The physical problems.

And the jumping in the fire and jumping in the water was fruit of another root. But if you aren't spiritual enough to see it. Or if you're spiritual enough to see it, but not spiritual enough to address it. You're staying healthy. You stay circumstantially bound.

Because you have not learned to go to the spiritual first. If I have a headache. And I go to Walgreens. And get Excedrin. Cause I know I got a headache.

And I go buy, I use that, I go buy some more, I use that. I go to the doctor and then he tells me, no, you have a tumor.

Now My symptoms are the same. I got a headache. But my root is different. And as long as I insist on Walgreens. I'm going to have to learn to live with a headache.

And I might have to die with a headache because I've been spending all my time and all my money treating the wrong thing. If I'm not willing to identify a tumor because I don't like doctors and he might find something and I don't want to be operated on, then I'm going to have to learn to live in my misery. And a lot of folk are having to exist in their misery because they refuse to pay attention to what the great physician has to say about the diagnosis of what's wrong.

So Jesus cures the boy. Ah, now it gets interesting. Because verse 19, then the disciples came to Jesus. Privately. Yeah.

They're embarrassed. They've been over there doing their hocus-poker stuff, whatever they were doing. Nothing happening. Boy, getting worse. Nothing's going.

They're counseling, they're doing all this stuff to try to deliver the boy. Nothing happening. Jesus show up one second. Bam. Over.

Jesus. We tried. And not like we didn't try. We tried and it didn't work. I bet you right now.

There are some folks sitting under the sound of my voice and you're afraid that I'm trying. I'm trying. I go to church. I read my Bible. I'm trying.

In fact, there's some folk here who in your private conversation with Jesus are saying It doesn't work. It doesn't work. This religious thing, this Christian thing, it doesn't work. what the disciples are saying. It's not working.

I'm not getting victory. I'm not being delivered. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. It's not working. And I tried.

They tried, it wasn't working. And they want to know why.

So for all of you Doubters. Questioners. For you or for somebody else, because we want to, even if you don't need it, we want you to be, if you don't need to be delivered, I need you to be a deliverer. Because the disciples were supposed to deliver So they want to know why.

So Jesus answers that question, verse 20. He said to them, Because of the littleness of your faith. The reason you failed was the power of unbelief. Your faith was so tiny That you didn't cross the bridge into the supernatural that you just saw me do. Because your faith was missing.

So, what's the point? Your faith will determine your experience or lack thereof of the supernatural. He didn't say there was no faith. That's interesting. He said, your faith was too small.

Your faith was Watch this. insufficient for the problem. You had enough faith to go to church. You had enough faith to be religious. You may even have enough faith to pick up your Bible, but what you had and what you needed didn't match.

He says, I say to you, He's talking to his disciples. We're his disciples. Yeah. If you Have faith the size of a mustard seed. Will say to this mountain, move from here to there, and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.

You need mustard seed faith. to deal with mountainsized problems. Things you can't change, they're too big. In order to move a mountain. He says you need a mustard.

Watch this, stay with me. You got this huge problem, this huge addiction, this huge crisis, this huge issue. It's big. It's been there for years. You've tried everything you know.

It won't budge.

Well, it looks like it's budging and then it still doesn't budge. He said, what's missing is mustard. A mustard seed faith.

Now Just so you get the picture. Inside that seed. When planted. Is a fifth. Fifteen foot mustard tray.

See The seed is tiny. Watch this. But the life inside of it is big. You with me? It's a small seed.

One. Big lives. Or I could use something else. An acorn. An acorn is an oak waiting to happen.

Ever see how big oak trees get? And all of that. It's in that acorn.

So what made their faith little was the lack of life inside of it. It was a life issue, not a size issue, because this mustard seed was used to refer to the smallest kind of seed you could ever have. And you see how small it is. The issue was living faith versus lifeless faith.

So what makes your faith small is the absence of spiritual life inside of it. If it's void of spiritual life, James 2 calls it. Dead faith. It's a faith without life. Our problem is a lack of life.

So we come up with big things, big programs, big activities, big expectations with no life, so it won't grow. It won't grow. See, if something doesn't have life, it can't grow. He says, if you have A mustard seed kind of faith. That is a light pulsating with light, even though it's tiny.

What you will see this thing produce will blow your mind. Because it's full of life. Dr. Evans will share an interesting comparison between a mustard seed and a mountain. when he returns in a moment with more from his current series, Believing is Seeing.

Now you're probably used to hearing that phrase the other way around. But this eight-lesson series makes it clear that when faith comes first, your vision becomes sharp enough to recognize what God is doing in your life. You'll discover how to trust Him in hard times, take the risk of faith, and stop blocking the miracles He wants to do in your life. Right now we are offering the Believing is Seeing Sermon Collection. as our way of saying thanks when you make a donation to help keep Tony's teaching on this station.

It's available as a digital download as well as on a C D album or USB flash drive. And when you contact us right away, we'll include a powerful bonus. Tony's brand new devotional and prayer guide, Anchored by Faith. Packed with daily readings and scripture-based prayers, it's designed to help you stand firm and confident when life storms threaten to shake you.

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But right now, let's get back to more from Dr. Evans on the power of unbelief. Notice the comparison. It's between A mustard seed and a mountain. If you get an acorn.

in between a crack and a concrete. Or growing up underneath a concrete, you will see an acorn once its life is expressed. Open up concrete. How can an acorn open up concrete? Because when the life, even though small, that it has begins to express itself, it overrides a solid slab that looks like it's covering up and sealing it.

because the nature of the life inside of it.

So it's the nature of the faith that produces the power of the supernatural. Jesus says, when you have a living faith, you not only know what God can do. A lot of Christians will go around talking about, I believe he's able. I believe he can fix it. I believe he's a wheel in the middle of a wheel.

I believe he's a barman Gilead. I believe he's a Rosa Sharon. I believe he's a right and morning star. But they never graduate from can to will. You will tell the mountain What it must do.

You will not simply recite what it can do. You will say to this mountain, the mountain is the obstacle, the mountain is the problem. You and the mountain are gonna have a conversation, and you're gonna say, addiction. You're gonna say situation. You're going to speak to it.

And it must back off. Why must it back off? because of the life you confronted it with. You confronted it with living faith. And the seaman was not able to handle the growth of the life.

Wouldn't it be something supernatural if you could speak to your stuff? And your stuff would move. But this is not the kind of faith Most Christians Can't. When you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, You have crossed over from death to life, from hell to heaven. You had a supernatural experience because you were given eternal life.

That was a supernatural act when you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior. The problem is that the faith we use to get saved that took us to a supernatural location in heaven in our eternal destiny, we skip when it comes to living in history.

So many of us are going to have to wait till we get to heaven to see heaven. Because we did not live by faith on earth so that heaven could visit us. Accepting Christ takes you to heaven. Living by faith brings heaven to you.

So, the problem today is that there are too many. Unbelieving believers. They live unbelievingly. He says In closing, but this kind. does not go out except by prayer and fasting.

But this kind. He's talking about a kind where demons are behind it. In other words, this is deep. This is not ordinary. This is, this thing goes deep.

So, When aspirin can't fix it, You better go to the doctor. Will you realize that your will can't fix it. that the folk you know can't fix it, that the other Christians you hanging out with can't fix it, that means this thing is so deep spiritually that you must dig deeper spiritually. This kind only comes out by prayer and fasting. What he was saying to them, guys, this boy's problem was so spiritually deep, you should have gone deeper spiritually.

What y'all were doing was not going deeper spiritually. And that's what most Christians run from. I don't want to do that. I don't want to go deeper in fasting and prayer. I don't want to go deeper in wrestling with God.

I don't want to go deeper. If that thing has been with you for years and you can't control it and it controls you, you better go deeper because there may be a demon keeping that up on you. And you don't handle demons by wishing them away. You don't handle demons by taking pills. You don't handle demons.

You handle demons by going deeper with God because only God can handle errant angels. Since you gotta go deeper. Look, if you're on a bus and your bus gets stuck in a in a hole, And you trying to get the bus out of the hole. And you got ten guys there who They're big, strong guys too. We're in this ditch, God.

Let's get off. And let's push the buttons out the hole. You're in a hole. And 10 guys are pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing. And it won't move.

But you're trying, you're trying, you're trying. And these guys are built, they're strong, they're weightlifters, and you're pushing, but the hole is too deep. But you're sweating and you're doing everything you can and you gotta get out of this hole. I gotta get out of this hole. I gotta get somebody else out of this hole.

All these people are in this hole. Let me suggest something. If you find out That Clark Kennedy's on the bus. You discover a man Clark Kennedy's on the bus. That should change your strategy.

Cause you're in a hole. You're trying to push out of the hole. But somebody says Ken is on the bus. You spend more time with Kent. Then you do.

trying to push it. Because Kent has the power. You see, the reason why 10 has the power is He ain't from here. Kent is from a place called Krypton. He's from a place out there.

But as Clark Kent He lives down here possessing the power From up there. And when he unbuttons. And takes off his shirt. And unhooks his tie. And you see that big S on his chest.

Now it is clear. The power you need. For the hole you're in is really in the person you just talked to. The power from the supernatural person can push you out without breaking a sweat. The disciples broke the sweat.

was not able to solve the problem because they missed Jesus. The reason why the man got the problem solved is he skipped the weightlifters and went straight to Jesus and Jesus fixed overnight what the sweating disciples were not able to push out of a hole.

So when it's that deep, you go deeper spiritually, which means you need to know somebody, have somebody who knows how to go there, take you there, and lift you out of there. If up until now you've had a hard time reaching that deeper spiritual level, stay with us. Dr. Evans will return with a final word of encouragement in just a moment. But first, a great way to follow up on today's message is to review the full-length version, which contains material we didn't have time to share on the broadcast.

The title to ask about is The Power of Unbelief. Better yet, get it as a part of Tony's complete eight lesson series called Believing is Seeing. If you contact us right away, we'll also include Dr. Evans' brand new devotional and prayer guide, Anchored by Faith. a daily resource to help you stay steady and confident in God even when life feels uncertain.

We'll send this special package to you as our way of saying thanks for your contribution to help keep this program coming your way. You can get all the details and make your request online at tonyevans.org. That's tonievans.org. or call our 24-hour resource center at 1-800-800-3222. The number again 1-800-800-3222.

A logical mind is a great thing to possess. Until we decide we can outthink the Lord. Tomorrow, Dr. Evans explains how we can be our own worst enemy when it comes to receiving the miracles God has planned for us. Right now though, he's back to wrap up today's message with this final story.

Now let me just close with a thought. In Mark's version, Mark chapter 9, Daddy had a problem. Jesus asked daddy. Do you believe I can heal your son? And the man says something astounding.

He says I believe Help my unbelief. He says, I bleed, but I'm shaky. I believe, but I'm scared. I believe, but I kind of don't believe. But I believe kind of don't believe but I want to believe But I believe, I kind of don't believe, but I want to believe, but I can't help myself to believe.

I believe, I kind of don't believe, but I want to believe. Will you give me what I lack so I can go deep enough to believe so that you can lift me up out of this hole? And the Bible says when he asks for help. to even help his faith.

So that it can have the faith. For Jesus to do the miracle, Jesus gave him the faith he needed to bolster up the faith he had. for the seriousness of the situation and healed his son.

So even if your faith is weak, you got a faith helper.

So get ready for your miracle. As long as you cross the bridge. Because Here it is. My closing line. Without him you cannot.

But without you He will not.